Forecast: 9-13
Attained: 8-12

So full...

Cubs' birthday party today. :) Aside from the Sigma!cub giving himself a cricked neck when he woke up, they both had a great time. Friends, food and presents: what more do you need?
(I overcatered a bit. We only used about half of what I brought! And that's not including the lollies, which weren't touched cos the cubs' father had supplied plenty. Iz ok, though, I generously left them - and the rest of the stuff - at his place so they won't be tempting me at mine. Cunning, eh...?)


The cubs' cake.

The blue flames and red cross are character symbols from Team Fortress 2, something the cubs play a lot of. The blue/red mushrooms are a bit of Penny-whimsy. :)
(Note the roman numerals in candles. That's traditional now.)
Thank you, Soulsis, for baking the cake and making the yellow icing. Thank you, Penny for the blue and red stuff. Cubs were very impressed, though not quite sure where the mushrooms fitted in...

~=o>

And now, some meaningful song lyrics.
I think there's something in here for everyone...

Come, a beautiful body.

I'm sorry astronaut pants donor
a laser would make whipped cream love on your body

against me

want a nice girl or man or somewhere sexy, oh
yes, I think is it hot baby

hold it, kiss me big in here
I love you money sugar
one word, nice shirt
be wearing, I'm wrong
can I? has anyone?

sex on my organ, the sunshine walk by again
taking off your clothes last night
I thought that was because a drink, piece of heaven
haven't told me you have a braille heart

can you talk if I told you you taste like this bed
at first sight, directions to a place

the best looking guy heaven, out of this world, die happy
I'm the spice god
but hi fine

[giggling] Although it does sound to me like a Chinese translation of a Japanese song, it is infact a collaborative effort between Ms Raven, Soulsis, Penny, Misha and a bunch of random magnet words on the fridge.
Like so:

~=o>
Cubs' actual birthday is tomorrow. They'll be at their dad's again, I'll probly still be sleeping off the food from today...

Forecast: 10-14
Attained: 12-14

Wow, this week has just galloped away. I look up and suddenly it's Friday...

~=o>

Still picking up bits and pieces for the cubs' party tomorrow. Went hunting for garlic bread tonight but wasn't impressed with any of the ready-made stuff so, naturally, I decided to make my own.
Seriously overestimated how much I'd need so I've now got a biggish tub of quite acceptable garlic butter. (Cheated a bit, though, I've used minced garlic instead of fresh cos I just couldn't be bothered. :)

Forecast: 7-15
Attained: 8-14

The valtari mystery film experiment
(nicked from the site:)

sigur rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's new album valtari. the idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom...

I shall be keeping an eye on this.
The clip featuring Shia LeBeouf is beautiful. Odd, but beautiful. (Warning: Nudity, Violence, General Brain Bending...)

~=o>

One cub's job is to take out the rubbish, the other the recycling. Both tasks frequently require gentle reminders from me for completion.
I warned the recycling cub last night that the recycling pile was so big now it was threatening to secede. He laughed.
Tonight I told him the pile had got as far as designing its own flag and drafting a Declaration of Independence. He laughed, then trotted it all out to the bin. :)

~=o>

I did quite well at the supermarket tonight: I didn't buy any snacky lollies or chocolate for myself, something that can be tricky not to do after work when I'm tired and hungry. (I did pick up some ready-made chocolate mousse but that was dessert for the cubs and I, and not something to scoff in the car on the way home, so it doesn't count.)

~=o>

'k, I'm just going to watch naked Shia Lebeouf again. (Though saying that is like saying Brokeback Mountain was just about gay cowboys...)

Forecast: 2-13
Attained: 5-13

Didn't see any frost this morning but it was still jolly chilly.

~=o>

I love this song.

Warning: LANGUAGE
(No, seriously, LANGUAGE.)

Forecast: 4-13
Attained: 8-12

Haven't seen a frost symbol on the bom.gov.au forecast page for quite some time. Tomorrow morning should be interesting...



~=o>

I've been swearing a lot recently. Given my current lack of manual dexterity - due to the cold temperatures - I've been dropping things, and knocking things over, and bashing my hands against things. [grump]

~=o>

Before we headed off to S.A. Niki gave me belated birthday presents, including these! Mini chinese lantern party lights!




Solar powered, so I park the light catcher thingy next to my bedside lamp.
Hee, they're not quite bright enough to read by, but perfect for these dark mornings when my eyes are still waking up and don't like full light, but I still need to see where I'm going. :)

Forecast: 10-15
Attained: 12-15

I've started gathering the 'food' for the cubs' party on Saturday. I say 'food' cos there's very little actual nutrition involved. Their dad jokingly suggested they might want to try something exotic for nibbles, like say, broccoli... :)

~=o>

It's a little awkward walking behind the cubs cos they're so tall now they block my view. On the plus side they act as icebreakers, ploughing through the mass of humanity, leaving me to step lightly in their empty, empty wake. Is good.

Forecast: 7-14
Attained: 10-16

I vacuumed my bedroom floor today, well, the bits that weren't under stuff.
Now's there just a pile of chaos in front of the wardrobe to do something with.
Why the effort? Rental inspection coming up in a few weeks...

(But I really should dust and vacuum my room more often. I don't wake up with a runny nose when I do.)

~=o>

Popped up to see soulsis this afternoon - incidentally dropping home one of her chicks, who'd stayed overnight - and was presented with a bag of goodies! She finds the best stuff in op shops :)



The 'Willow Pattern Story' is cos I love the Willow pattern; the 'Our Empire Story' is from 1906! The pate knife is gorgeous and will slot very nicely in with others of its ilk, as will the golden chicken. Classy!
The pink plastic fish-shaped tray is a match to the blue one I already have (which implies there's other colours out there!), and the leaf plate is just beautiful. I can picture that holding petite fours or miniature biscuits. Mmmmm

Forecast: 4-13
Attained: 6-14

Tch, can't remember what I was going to say. Must be the cold freezing my brain...
Have a cute owl instead.

Forecast: 8-12
Attained: 8-12

Wow, cubs will be 17 in just over a week.




(Uploaded without permission of the cub. Not that I'm entirely sure which one it is. Green hat? Could be Badger. We colour-coded everything when they were small. :)

[edit: just caught the cubs as they've come home from their dad's and after I said 'pleeeeeeeeease let me post it! they said ok.]

Forecast: 9-12
Attained: 10-10

(Temperature eased down to 10 around 6.30 this morning and has just... hovered there all day, right up 'til now. Weird...)

~=o>

I got my mitts on season 1 of Babylon 5, a series I've been meaning to rewatch for years. Happily watched the first disc of 4 eps then put in the second disc. Watched a couple of eps then was a bit annoyed to discover there were only 2 eps on the disc. Ripped off!
Except... it wasn't the 2nd disc I'd been watching, it was the 6th, the end of the season... [headdesk] I thought they'd been getting right in to the nitty-gritty of the plot really quickly. [sigh] Must remember to check the disc numbers in future..

Forecast: 6-16
Attained: 5-13

Howling winds predicted for tonight. I made sure the cubs brought the bins in. :)

~=o>

Spotted on Penny's tumblr.
I snorted my tea, srsly!



How to Live with Introverts by *SVeidt on deviantART

Respect my hamster ball! :)

Forecast: 8-15
Attained: 8-14

So, I did a little more reorganising in the pantry, and confused a cub when he went looking for the pasta... :)

~=o>

We had an earth tremor this evening! Was only a little bit exciting here. Much more exciting closer to the epicentre, not surprisingly. I thought at first it was a truck passing - not something easily achievable in our side streets - and then thought it was maybe a very strong wind buffeting the house. Wonder if it felt stronger in houses not made of concrete...?

Forecast: 10-16
Attained: 9-15

Finally, here on flickr are the pics from the Islandkateers' weekend...

~=o>

On a whim today I decided to reorganise the pantry. I finally let go of some of the very useful but ultimately unnecessary plastic containers. (My life, I know, so mad and spontaneous... :)

I've been forcing the cubs to get back to dealing with their rooms, sorting through more of the boxes.

They left one of the boxes unattended for five seconds...

Forecast: 10-15
Attained: 11-15

On skype last night with Joules:

Lutra: fiddling with my blog template...
Flare: let me know when done and I'll take a gander
oh, you won't like it much to begin with : )
I'll finesse it up a bit later. will be ready to peruse in a moment 
good show
 
[ten minutes later...]

blog's updated
dun dun dun
lotl
[blink]
AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!! 
[smirk]
I did warn you
you never take my warnings seriously
course not!
:P
[giggling...]

~=o>

Cubs and I watched X-Men: First Class.
We really enjoyed it! In fact, I enjoyed it so much I didn't even touch the crafty stuff I had ready to go. Was too engrossed in the story to pay attention to anything else.
Magneto's wandering accent made me giggle though: it ended up a bit Irish there at the finish...

Cubs and I were also really taken by the track in the closing credits. So we nipped over to our online purveyor of digital music and bought a copy.




You know, Robbie Williams really doesn't look like he belongs with the rest of them...

(Right, well, you may have noticed a change to my blog's appearance... Hard to miss, really, however...! I've had the previous template since 2002 and it really is time for a change. This includes loosing the now defunct commenting thing that hasn't worked properly for months, and stopped working altogether a few weeks back. Apologies to anyone who's been commenting and had no response.

I may find a more... restful b/g pic soon. Or not, I'm rather fond of that lobster...

I was just about to get grumpy cos I hadn't taken a screengrab of the old layout when I realised that thankfully it was still up in another tab. Phew, eh? All saved now for posterity... :)

Forecast: 9-17
Attained: 9-15

Today I've been swearing freely at minor irritations. I must be in a mood.
After a week of almost sugar-free, I should probly stop eating the hot choc mix straight out of the bag.

... I'm sure there's no connection.

~=o>

The gas company have been upgrading the service or something in our street. Gas was out for a few hours this morning while they dug stuff up.
The nice thing was that when they'd finished someone come 'round and offered to reset my gas hot water service. I said 'yes please' cos it really wasn't something I wanted to tackle. All good now. Hot water's back and I got my porridge.

~=o>

Triple J (my favourite radio station) this past week has been doing a retro indie 90s thing, including playing stuff from that decade. Great swathes of the 90s are blank to me cos I was raising children and not listening to the radio - let alone buying cds - so it's been great hearing some 'new' things, especially in genres I wouldn't normally consider. Like hip-hop:




Fabulous cruisey track, I love it.

~=o>

I cleaned the bath today. [sigh] Really should do it more frequently than 4 times a year.
Tomorrow it's the stove top, though I did only clean that a few weeks ago so it's not so bad...

Forecast: 10-16
Attained: 11-16

Had another ENT appointment today, essentially to confirm that yes, I'll have the surgery.
...meep.
No, it'll be fine.
The surgeon couldn't promise but there's a chance it'll be sorted by the end of the year.
Getting my hearing back, listening to the Beatles in stereo, eh whatevs. No, I'm anticipating the two weeks off work that's recommended. Mwahahahaha!

~=o>

Just watched the first ep of Life's Too Short.
Cacked myself laughing! (And the 'making of' doco was hysterical, too... :)

Forecast: 11-15
Attained: 12-15

Eh, doing a proper sort of the Islandkateer photos is going to have to wait for the weekend. The need for sleepy bo-bos wins out every time...

~=o>

Just showed the cubs' father the (unsorted) pics. He said I had an almost autistic approach to photography, the way I hone in on patterns. Was quite pleased about that. :)

~=o>

Niki recommended the Tiny House Blog to me. It's great! Very inspirational. :)

And this is adorable. (Joules - a claustrophobia warning).

Forecast: 8-17
Attained: 7-16

I've been eating very lightly the past couple of days. Here's why:

Islandkateers Weekend Noms

On arrival, Friday night:
Chilli con carne, sans chilli, with salad.

Saturday:
Breakfast - Pancakes, toast, bacon and Pete's magic scrambled eggs.

Lunch - BBQ chicken and lamb, with green salad, tomato salad, Waz' magic garlic things.

Dinner - (very simple, as we were all still full from lunch) cream of mushroom soup, french onion soup, Pete's magic cheesey dippy bread thing. (Salad? There may have been salad, I don't remember. I was too busy skarfing down soup and cheesey bread...)

Assorted nibbles throughout the day.

Sunday:
Breakfast - pancakes, bacon and Adele's magic scrambled eggs, plus spreads, and caramellized bananas, strained onions from last night's soup.

Lunch - (Or rather Afternoon Tea, cos breakfast was very filling, even after a good long walk) Ham and cheese, bread, salady things, sandwichey things... The details aren't clear because I'd fixated on the last of the mushroom soup - big bowl full - and more of the cheesey dippy bread.
Alarice also made some extremely rich bacon/bourbon brownies, and 'chocolate crackles' with coco pops and melted chocolate. (... or were they on Saturday? Either way, I ate a significant amount of them.)

Dinner - Beef stroganoff and broken potatoes (Magic Pete, again) followed by chocolate self-saucing puddings from Niki (who is also magic cos she made these despite being completely off sugar!).

Monday
As we had to clean up before leaving the house early, breakfast was delayed, to be partooken of later at a coffee shop. No one really seemed to mind the wait. :)


Listed like that it all seems very reasonable but bear in mind there was generally more than enough of everything for second helpings, gods help us.
At the end of the weekend there were unopened packets of biscuits, chips and chocolate. They didn't get eaten cos we were all too full of proper food!


The Islandkateers Temporary Headquarters.




And the view from there...



Boats and water! Happy Lutra... :)

Forecast: 5-16
Attained: 3-16

Hm, thought it was a bit chilly this morning...

~=o>

I believe that many people have roles in life to fulfill, i.e.: Teacher, Healer, Chronicler etc.
My role is not that of Adventurer. When a sign says 'Unstable Cliffs...' I don't go prancing about on the edge.
(That magpie stayed obligingly still for a couple of minutes while I faffed about with the camera zoom.)




Though having said that, this pic was taken devilishly close to a cliff-edge. (Well, 'devilishly close' for me. But I could just peer over the edge to look at bits of the cliff that had previously tumbled to the beach :)




(Both photos taken at Robe this past weekend. Haven't quite got 'round to sorting out the pics fully yet...)

Forecast: ... no idea
Attained: (in Robe, SA) 3-15

Yes, I'm back from a fabulous Islandkateers weekend!
This time we were in Robe, Sth Australia. Drove up and back with Niki - a very leisurely 9ish hours each way, including rest stops.
I've got just over 200 pics to sort through then I'll post those somewhere.
However...

OMG BIG THINGS!


The Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge!





'Larry the Lobster' at Kingston!





I touched both! (Akshully, there's pics of me hugging one of Larry's legs. Hee. :)
Will get on and do a post about the weekend but alas, right now I have to get ready to go to work tomorrow... [hand to forehead]

Forecast: 9-14
Attained: 11-14

These past few days at work I've only eaten fruit for lunch. It was more of a not-fancying-anything-else-available thing than trying to be 'good'.
It worked fine, really. I was hungry but not ravenously so.

~=o>



Gecko on the bathroom window at my brother's house.

Forecast: 8-14
Attained: 9-15

I find this strangely appealing.

Golden showers. [snicker]



see more Lovely Listing


I'd want someone else to clean it though.

~=o>

Cubs are usually still abed when I leave for work so I shout goodbyes through their doors. I generally get a response from one, even though I know he's not properly awake, merely conscious enough to be coherent. The other cub? Pffft Not a chance. This morning, because I was leaving much later than usual I did get a response. Was quite pleased about it, too. :)

~=o>

At the supermarket this evening I observed a little tacker - wouldn't have been more than three years old - get in to the freezer and pull out the biggest bag of frozen chips he could find. He was very pleased with himself. Needless to say, there were tears when Mum said 'no', and put them back...

Forecast: 10-13
Attained: 11-12

Well, only 1 degree of difference between today's low and high temperature...

~=o>

[giggling]

Forecast: 10-14
Attained: 10-14

I'm not good with household DIY: my first instinct when something goes wrong is to, frankly, panic, then call the agent.

This morning as we were just about ready to leave the house, a cub flushed the toilet then told me that it 'might have overflowed...'. [headdesk] Not something I wanted to hear. I peeked in and yes, there was water all over the floor but I didn't have time just then to do more than through down some towels to sop up the mess and confirm that the water level in the bowl seemed normal. Ok, I could probably leave it until I got back and there'd be no flooding in the meantime. Fine, good.

Zipped about, doing things then eventually had to come home and deal with the problem. Rang the agent to let them know, and while they were contacting the owner I decided to check if the loo was overflowing. So I flushed it again... and water came gushing out of the inlet pipe. Damn. Next time I'll remember to check the connections first. [grump] What's happened is the rubber seal between the pipe and cistern had perished and finally worked its way loose, something I could potentially fix myself. (See what I mean about panicking? I should've checked before I rang the agent, would've saved some trouble...) In hindsight there'd been some indication of this happening over the past year or so, little spills of water that I couldn't pin point, but anyway...
Agent called back with the news that the owner was having car trouble and wouldn't be able to come out until tomorrow. I said I could probably fix it anyhow but would let them know if I needed extra help. I pulled the seal off completely, checking that there wasnt going to be any extra leakage (there wasn't) then trotted off to my local hardware emporium.
Found the correct size seal and was back off home within minutes.

There was some awkwardness between the length and angle of pipe in relation to the cistern so I wasn't able to easily replace the seal and reattach the pipe. Removing the pipe completely from the cistern was the only other option so I switched off the water and emptied the cistern - just in case. Yay, for buckets. With the pipe free it was much easier to get the seal in place, then I simply had to reattach the pipe to the cistern. [snort] Simply.
Managed it, with lots of swearing and shoving while making sure the seal wasn't dislodged, but still, it was easier than trying to put everything together with the pipe in situ. However, I might have accidentally shoved a bit too hard and the cistern isn't quite attached to the wall anymore. Um... There's at least one point of contact left, I'm sure, and there's multiple rigid pipes holding it in place so I'm confident there won't be a problem. I've advised the cubs to not thump down on the flush button. Not that they do anyway, I think, but, you know...

(Bonus! Unlike the old place, the toilet in this house sits on a concrete floor so I won't have to worry about rotting floorboards. This is a win. :)

Forecast: 9-15
Attained: 10-14

The fun thing about sorting through photos for printing is that you rediscover all manner of stuff.

These are from 2007.

Advertising for a new chocolate bar, 'Fling', that disappeared without a trace a short while later. Pity, really, it was quite nice.
Anyway, note the princess in a dressing gown, and the sign on the front that says 'Forever is overrated, just have a fling'. [giggling] Maybe that was a bit risque for the supermarkets?

'Instructions' for a game. I think...

This was the illustration for a short, romantic story in something like the English Women's Weekly.
In short. Don't let the undead in to your car, let alone drive.

~=o>

Cubs and I are currently cracking up to The Upside Down Show.

This is one of the openings to an episode, recorded from someone's tv so the quality's not the best, but so, so funny...

Forecast: 7-17
Attained: 5-16

Penny sent me a pic of a Big Luck Cat somewhere in Japan.
Hah, and 10 mins later I'd tracked it down on Google Earth! Damn, I love the interwebs...

How cool is this? Pity it was foggy the day the Google van went by.
And those little blobs of colour at the bottom of the wall are more cat figures. :)

This is how the statue's constructed.
I... I want to touch it. I want to stroke its golden claws and boop it's nose.



This photo of Tokoname is courtesy of TripAdvisor


~=o>


Techo Viking!
Strangely compelling once you get past the 30 second mark.

Forecast: 6-17
Attained: 6-17

Black t-shirt.
Orange long sleeved, hooded t-shirt.
Blue windcheater.
Pink lambswool slippers.
Warm now.

~=o>

Outlook, the M$ mail program, doesn't query 'sith'...

~=o>

I wore my hearing aid again this week at work after months of forgetting about it. I find I'm more frequently startled when I'm wearing it than when I'm not. Without it I don't hear people approach on my deaf side and so am startled when I turn around and they're suddenly there. With it I'm twitching at all the sharp noises the aid lets me hear. There's a lot more of them than there are people sneaking up on me. :)